Yesterday’s mail brought me a course catalog from one of the key management training organizations. I get a lot of those catalogs and my response is always the same. “That’s so Twentieth Century.”
Imagine talent development for this century and paper course catalogs mailed out in bulk don’t seem like they should be part of the picture. There are a couple of reasons.
Those catalogs describe “appointment” training courses that draw people from many places to a single place at a single time. That will still happen, of course, but an awful lot of people will take an awful lot of courses online. If they meet at all, they’re likely to meet virtually.
Courses aren’t the only way people learn important things on the job. A lot of the time all a person needs is the little bit of knowledge to do what needs to be done right away. My friend Bob Moesta calls those bits “tiny methods,”
With all those courses and tiny methods available to everyone, talent development in companies will need to shift focus. Companies need to provide more company and industry training and resources plus rich developmental experiences.
Talent development includes learning events for sure, but it should also include developmental assignments. That’s where people can develop expertise in the variety of areas that knowledge work demands.
Support for those experiences will involve more coaching than we’re used to. Mastery doesn’t come all at once. It requires time and effort and feedback and critique. That’s where coaching can accelerate development.
So what will talent development be like in this interconnected, knowledge-based world of work? I suspect that the learning will be more self-directed. Companies will differentiate themselves based on their company and industry-specific training and resources and on the developmental opportunities they offer. Reflection and coaching will be a big part of the mix.
